Awakening

Fu Qinghai was dreaming.

A long, boundless dream.

Sometimes he felt like a fish, breathing oxygen from the water, swimming freely in the deep sea.

As he swam, he would think: So this is what it feels like to breathe underwater.

Sometimes he felt like a bird soaring through the sky, the petrel from his middle school textbook.

The text he had memorized as a child appeared hazily in his dream, and he transformed into the petrel flying through the storm.

Gale-force winds and torrential rain, crashing waves, thunder and lightning...

"Crack!" A bolt of lightning pierced the dark clouds and struck him.

Damn, that hurts like hell!

Fu Qinghai felt like he was being numbed by the lightning, first in his chest, then his abdomen, then his back.

Is this the price of being a scumbag?

Suddenly, he felt a chill on the top of his head, and his entire being felt a sense of sudden enlightenment...

But most of the time, it was a muddled, blurry dreamscape.

Until...

[You have successfully been transformed into a White Scars Legion Space Marine, achieving a stage milestone event!]

[Calculating assimilation points... 781 points]

The cold voice in his mind pierced through the muddled dreamscape, reaching straight into Fu Qinghai's consciousness.

He was awakened in an instant.

Fu Qinghai opened his eyes abruptly, and what met his gaze was a turbid, surging fluorescent yellow liquid, through which he could see the transparent glass cover outside.

Fu Qinghai discovered that he was breathing naturally within the liquid; the flowing fluid filled his lungs with every breath, passing through his mouth, nose, and throat.

He moved his hands and feet, feeling somewhat unfamiliar and restrained, yet he had an inexplicable sensation.

He felt that he could break free with a single gentle struggle.

But Fu Qinghai did not move recklessly; lying in the glass pod, he calmly surveyed his surroundings.

At the same moment, the red alarm light outside the cryogenic incubation pod suddenly lit up, emitting a "beep-beep-beep" sound.

Master Kunto, buried in work at his workbench, looked up abruptly.

"Hm? Woke up early," his mechanical prosthetic eye flickered, "half a month ahead of schedule."

He walked toward the incubation room.

Fu Qinghai saw a figure moving outside through the turbid incubation fluid and was just about to focus his gaze when he felt the pod shake, and the liquid surrounding him began to drain slowly.

"Hiss—click!"

As the liquid drained away, the glass door opened.

Fu Qinghai saw the aged face beneath Master Kunto's dark red hood, along with his eerie green mechanical prosthetic eye.

Fu Qinghai spoke with sticky vocal cords: "Master..."

"Come out. Be careful, don't fall, and don't use too much force." The familiar, raspy voice.

Fu Qinghai struggled to control his slightly unfamiliar limbs, carefully standing up from the incubation pod before climbing out.

Some viscous, transparent liquid still remained on his skin.

He was stark naked, but Fu Qinghai looked down and saw that his body hair had grown back.

He meant his leg hair.

Just as Fu Qinghai stood steady, he looked down and noticed something wrong.

Master Kunto, who used to be short and only reached his shoulder, had now become even shorter, reaching only his upper abdomen.

Fu Qinghai's brain, soaked for too long in the incubation fluid, barely managed to turn.

This is... I've grown taller?

"Follow me." Without waiting for Fu Qinghai to ask, Master Kunto turned and walked away.

The stark-naked Fu Qinghai followed Kunto with a stumbling gait to the workbench.

"Sit." Kunto pointed to an iron crate nearby.

Fu Qinghai sat down as instructed.

The mechanical hand beneath Kunto's robes nimbly pulled some metal tubes from the workbench, attaching the probes at the ends to the top of Fu Qinghai's head, his chest, and his back.

Sitting on the iron crate, Fu Qinghai also slightly adjusted his breathing, adapting to his new body.

He felt his hearing had improved and his vision had strengthened; he could now clearly see the dim corners of the workbench that the shadowless lamps couldn't reach.

He felt another hint of something wrong, and Fu Qinghai held his breath to listen carefully... He heard it, the sound of his own heartbeat within his chest... It seemed a bit off.

A heart murmur? No, not a murmur... It should be... it is...

"Very good, both hearts are beating normally, no organ necrosis." Master Kunto's voice sounded beside him.

As he spoke, the Tech-priest picked up a small scalpel from the table and made a deep incision across Fu Qinghai's chest.

Blood surged out instantly, yet what was exposed beneath the skin was not a layer of red muscle, but a patch of black, carapace-like material.

The blood only welled up for a moment before it began to clot rapidly; a few seconds later, a fresh little scab had formed.

Fu Qinghai looked down at all of this.

He already had an epiphany in his heart.

From this moment on.

He was no longer human.

He was a two-hearted, three-lunged Astartes.

He was a precision-running war machine, a meticulously designed killing tool.

At this moment, aboard the frigate Dagger, inside the training cage.

Ogedei, who had lost his lower body, sat in a mechanical circular wheelchair, wielding a heavy long blade in each hand, swinging them with great effort.

Facing weapons attacking from all directions, he had no feet to maneuver or dodge, so he could only rely on his two strong arms and his weapons to parry.

"Clang, clatter, snap, shing!"

Ogedei used his core strength to spin rapidly, the long blades in his hands dancing into afterimages as he parried the incoming weapons from all around.

The powerful collisions of metal against metal erupted in clusters of sparks.

Suddenly, a metal spear thrust out unexpectedly from the lower left behind him; Ogedei could not dodge in time, and a spray of blood instantly burst from his side.

"Argh!" He let out a pained cry, though it sounded more like frustration than agony.

Outside the training cage, Talal stood with his arms crossed, silently watching Ogedei inside the cage.

Being wounded by the training cage was a disgrace for any veteran Astartes seasoned in battle.

At this moment, a black mechanical skull floating in the air flew into the training bay.

This was a Servo-skull.

Red light flickered twice in the skull's hollow eye sockets as it emitted a cold, electronic voice:

"Lord Talal, Lord Ogedei, Master Kunto requests your presence in the laboratory."

Talal stopped the operation of the training cage at the right moment, looked at the sweating, panting Ogedei inside the cage, and said:

"Ogedei, guess what, that kid is probably out."

Still mired in frustration, Ogedei suddenly looked up, surprised: "He finished the transformation so quickly?"